::Hung in a Row::

I’ve always LOVED my stocking. Each stocking my Grandmother made her grandchildren was unique, with our names of course. She was an talented knitter.

I love Santa’s nose, likely rosie from too much eggnog. His fuzzy beard made of Angora and the sequins sewn into his tree as ornaments. It is so heartwarming to know that he was preciously made with me in mind.

Roan has been so lucky to have a Great Grandmother craft a stocking especially for him as well.

G.G. passed away right after I took this photo a couple years back, so bringing it out every year now is special. Straight from the beach he looks so young (and great salty hair) in this photo.

Needlepoint this time. His name and a puff ball adorns the bear’s hat.

My handmade stocking always made me feel extra special and there were traditions you could count on, like a big navel orange and red delicious apple in the bottom.

This year I’m making a stocking for Jefe. His stocking made by his grandmother that made Roan’s somehow got lost in the shuffle. We have one knit and one needlepoint and I thought, why not patchwork? I think he’ll get beer and some bright flashy new lights for his bike commute in the morning.

The class sample was good practice, but I am going to go bigger with his. I’ll be able to see what others come up with tomorrow in class, it is always fun to see what fabrics inspired people and who they will be making their stocking for.

Roan always gets a star fruit, pomegranate and some chocolate coins. I would love to come up with some other unique items that can become part of the stocking tradition.

::Zip Pouch Class:: $45/ Saturday, December 1st from 10am-1pm at the Quilting Loft in Ballard. (Combine with the Improv Strip-Pieced Oven Mitt class later in the day and receive both classes for $80).

Pouches make great gifts! Come learn the technical ins-and-outs of making one (or two) in this class before the gift giving season.

::Improv Strip-Pieced Oven Mitt or Christmas Stocking Class:: $45/Saturday, December 1st from 1:30-4:30pm at the Quilting Loft in Ballard.(Combine with the zip-pouch class earlier in the day and get both classes for $80).

Learn the improvisational technique of strip-piecing to design and construct a fully lined oven mitt or stocking. Great for gifts!

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Comments

I have a stocking from my wonderful and talented grandmother that looks almost identical to yours! Except my name isn’t Katie. 🙂 She has also passed away and I miss her a lot. Glad your son got to know your grandma a bit. It’s sad that their generation is passing away because there were some amazing, loving, hard working, talented people. I hope I can be like my grandma.

My mom did a bottle of bubbles for everyone and always a hand project to keep me busy until everyone else woke up. I would wake up VERY excited in the wee hours of the morning. The rule was stockings are free game, but presents wait until after coffee.

Hi Katie, I used to put a new toothbrush in everyone’s stocking until everyone changed to electric toothbrushes. Every year the goodies change and are appropriate to each person. My favorite Christmas decoration was made by my daughter Diana when she was nine. It is a wall hanging that says “JOY”. I will show it to you tomorrow. Hugs, Joan

I made my sons’ Christmas stockings when they were little way back in the early ’70s. I made them with red hopsack fabric, white eyelet trim for the cuff and embroidered each with their name and a different graphic. They make me smile when I look at them because they are just so typical of the time frame in which they were made. To their credit, my sons both put their very old and relatively small stockings out each year. I have offered to make larger, more contemporary stockings but, as my youngest son said, “my stocking has been fine for 38 years, no need to change it”! Our only tradition in the stocking is a tangerine every year. The other things come and go but always there is a tangerine in the toe!

Love homemade stockings! I’m currently at work on a felt and embroidery one for our baby girl to go along with the one my mother made me when I was a baby and the ones I’ve made for my son and husband.. not sure it will be done in time for her first Christmas however!

We always got chapstick, lifesavers and a new toothbrush in our stockings. And for many years as kids we’d get a new package of pipecleaners- my parents have video of us screeching with excitement about the pipecleaners. We were crafty kids 🙂

My parents would collect during the year (as there were quite a few kiddos in my family) and every Christmas morning we would eagerly check our stockings to see who had a $2 bill, a 50 cent piece, a bicentennial quarter, a wheat penny, or some other special and “rare” coin.

Just a thought for the oven mitt class tomorrow Katie – should I have my scraps pieced together to form one “fabric”? If so, what size should it be – FQ? I’m hoping to get a couple done as I hope to make a bunch for Christmas gifts for the girls. So any head start I can get would be appreciated…

My parents would always give me a jar of marshmallow fluff in mine – I used to be obsessed with “fluffer-nutter” sandwiches (peanut butter + fluff). My brother would get a can of EZ Cheese in his and one of his presents would be a wrapped box of crackers.

My favorite thing about Christmas was the new PJs on Christmas Eve (that weren’t there before you left for church) and how much stuff my mom fit into our stockings…we’d get up early, look at our stuff, then would inevitably try to put it all back in…unsuccessfully, of course!

My stocking is made of felt and is made around a small coffee can so it sits on its own (we didn’t have a mantle). Every year my sisters and I got an orange, walnuts and some wacky pair of socks that we wore that day. Over the years I have also received a number of other handmade stockings – I should share pictures of them this year on my blog…

I am the stocking maker in my family. As a kid we all had the red and white flocked ones. When I was 24 or 25 I made everyone a patchwork one-mom, dad(the biggest of course), sister, grandmother, and me (grandfather passed before he got one). The cats(one for all), the rabbits& fish(one for all), my cat Opus, sis’s cat Zoe. Then Grandpa Jack(married grandmother). My cat Kalli. Last year my sister’s fiance. This year I was TOLD the dog-in-law Smitty needed one. We have always gone crazy with stocking stuffers. I get cool chocolates for everyone form World Market. Mom and grandmother get us toothbrushes, chapstick, toothpaste, shampoo, note pads, kitchen scrubbies,-anything useful and small. Dad gets us superglue, pens, tape, small tools, flashlights, and fuel injector cleaner. Our stockings are stuffed, we fill a giant stocking that overflows onto the hearth. We love to sit around and open them one by one round robin style and laugh and chat and have a fun day together.

Wow! Such lovely stockings…you and your family are indeed blessed to have been given a handmade stocking by your talented grandmother…you have definitely inherited her creativity. Merry Christmas in advance…

Love the stockings. I still have mine from when I was small too. When I was a kid, we always had a satsuma in the toe. When we visited my aunt & uncle in CA over Christmas, there was always an avocado. In my own family now, rubber scrapers/spatulas make a frequent appearance, and everyone always gets a Reese’s peanut butter tree!

I had a pretty ugly granny square stocking (made with the brightest cheapest yarn :-P) but I loved that thing! It was huge! Biggest one in the family and stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the family’s “nice” ones. It was made for mother many years before me. Either way it was awesome 😉
We never had any family traditions as far as stocking fillers go … The usual small toys and candy …

I have the exact same stocking made by my grandmother. I had to comission someone to make ones for my daughters. I’m a knitter but not nearly at the same caliber as she was. Love those stockings, handmade gifts are the best!

As a kid , because I loved them, I got a can of Mandarin oranges in the toe of my stocking.
I KNIT stockings for my children, husband, and self—just plain with a striped cuff. The males got red and the females got green. Knit stockings are nice and stretchy for the gifts!
I heard about oranges in the toe and started that for everyone. We bring them to the table for breakfast fruit. Otherwise we receive little toys, puzzles, candies, noisemakers. your own Scotch tape [!]. [Used to get toothbrushes before electric ones.]

I always put some Hershey’s kisses in my girls’ stockings. I hadn’t realized I did it every year at first until one of the girls said something about how Santa always gave them Hershey’s kisses 🙂 It is a tradition now.

Oranges in the toes here, too. Other traditions are chapstick and some fancy shmancy single-serve hot chocolate packets, which we’d usually make up that morning and sip between present openings. I can’t wait to get our tree!

We got those LifeSavers books, chocolate coins,and those plastic puzzles where you had to slide the pieces around to put the numbers in order from 1 – 14. I have no idea what those puzzles were called.
I made needlepoint stockings for my children, husband, and father. When my father died I took over his stocking, so my stocking says Dad. An artist friend drew the pictures on the needlepoint canvas so each one is unique. My daughters have their own families now and still use their childhood stockings. One of my daughters has made lovely cross stitch stockings for all the children and relatives that have been added in the last few years.

I have a friend who puts a lottery ticket in each stocking. My mom made all our ours out of felt kits, and she used to put mandarin oranges in the toes, until the toes gave out. Now they have to rest on the floor once filled. We usually get gift cards for bookstores, oranges and nuts, or small chocolates. One thing I still get most years and still don’t really like are those candy necklaces. Yet, every year, I wind up eating it anyway.

Madeleine’s Christmas stocking is my project for this week. It’s so heartwarming to be the gran now, carrying on the tradition of handmade holidays. Even if she’s small enough to fit IN the stocking this year!

i remember always getting the coolest little exotic toys in our stockings….and always always a huge delicious apple and a huge orange. santa made a trip into the big city the saturday before christmas every year and found things we never saw out in the country. st.lawrence market in toronto had the biggest fruits in the world back then. pier 1 import stores had the coolest toys. now everything is available everywhere and i wonder how you “thrill” a kid these days. it’s been great to read all these responses, thank you!!

Just catching up with this – the children are grown up (26, 22,22) and now fill our stockings and we do theirs. Stockings always contain a satsuma, an apple, chocolate coins, soap. Then small things appropriate to the person – still a small ‘toy’ each. Mine always seems to include a crazy kitchen tool – minus its label so I have to guess what it is for!